By Sebastian Kontovounisios,

Has the title baffled you?

Well, let me introduce you to Kastelorizo or Cat Island as I like to call it due to its abundance of feline dwellers. Another flattering op-ed on the superior beauty of Greek islands, you say? No, on the contrary, our subject is quite inane and one that I will try to dress up with as much literary flair and illustrative adjectives as possible.

So, going back to our title, how about those hydrates? Well, here is a word that hounded me for almost the entirety of my military service (which I spent on Kastelorizo). I first heard it on the boat-ride to Cat Island and the word went on to inhabit my mind ever since. It wasn’t the word itself that kept popping up but rather incidents that inadvertently pointed to it; talk about a mythical treasure found deep in the island’s turquoise waters, debates on TV about the Exclusive Economic Zone of Kastelorizo, my commander’s musings on the International Law of the Sea.

Do I still have your attention? Good because Cat Island seems to be sitting on a massive reserve of hydrates that, according to scientists, possibly constitute the solution to mankind’s energy problem.

Wikimedia Commons

Of course, no one on Cat Island really knows what hydrates are and

Glad to see young talented Greek and German friends mentioned at the Associated Press article by Christopher Torchia and their stories ...

"A few Greek entrepreneurs perch in front of laptops in bare offices above a ground-floor supermarket, five minutes' walk from the Athens square convulsed by riots last month over the country's economic crisis.

"Innovate," a wall slogan exhorts. "Originate." A bowl of fist-sized plastic balls sits on a table, ripe for the plucking. Sure, the touches are geeky. But if there is hope for debt-laden Greece, which has just been bailed out again by the EU, there is a glimmer of it here. A small enterprise called CoLab Workspace rents space to tech-savvy startups on the theory that the more they mingle, the more they thrive. This nascent pocket of dynamism won't make much of a dent in a culture of freeloading and favor-trading that burrowed deep into the Greek psyche, but it is a symbol, however rarefied, of fresh thinking.

For the problem is not just the numbers, the dots that connect a picture of economic collapse. Unemployment, austerity measures, bailout funds and the slumping stock market are one thing. Modern Greece, whose ancestors laid foundations of art, democracy and individualism, is also reckoning with ingrained habits of dependence, accompanied today by a yawning sense of betrayal and hopelessness, that block its path to recovery.

"It's extremely difficult. Here, in general, innovation never existed. The majority of the companies, they relied on the state, on the government. It was a totally wrong approach," said Vassilis Nikolopoulos, a computer engineer whose IT startup, Intelen, aims to help firms monitor and curb their energy consumption. He recently shifted his operations to CoLab Workspace from a conventional office that cost more.

Declaring that "the state is dead," in that it has no money to support projects, Nikolopoulos said he has raised about one-third of the roughly $300,000 needed for initial funding from private investors and that his 7-member company plans to export services even if it entails failure, a rite of passage for any aggressive entrepreneur.

by Natali Lekka*

Such is the love for food among Mediterranean countries that after a joint petition, put forward by Greece, Spain, Italy and Morocco,  UNESCO decided to include the Mediterranean diet in the World Heritage list, in the 5th session of the UNESCO Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage, in Nairobi, Kenya, last November.

Every year, thousands of food festivals take place in every corner of the Mediterranean region, and Greece, which boasts one of the healthiest diets in the world, could not be missing from the feast.

I haven’t been on the streets for about twenty years, but I can’t stand this anymore. I decided to protest after many years because I cannot bare our politicians’ apathy for people’s problems. They just keep on slamming the taxes on us - and that’s all. If politicians really wanted to find solutions for the country they would. One indignant protestor speaks

The Aganaktismenoi (αγανακτισμένοι) indignant movement started on 25 May with the first call for a public gathering at Syntagma Square in the centre of Athens. The message of the movement varies with the participants you meet. Yet people from all ages (especially twenty- and thirty-somethings) and walks of life (you’ll spot many suits and ties in the crowd) share one thing in common: we do not want any political coloration -correlation within the Aganaktismenoi movement.

Syntagma Square | Aganaktismenoi movement

One of the main dangers is for trade unions and left political parties to take advantafe of these gatherings and present the situation as they want. This cannot be more further from the truth, because we do not want any syndicalist or political party invasion. We’ve had enough with all political parties in power and within parliament – right, left, centre, socialist, conservative, communist, no matter!

The classical greek ‘moutza’, or the five open fingers sign | Ancient gesture symbolising aversion and abhorrence of a person towards a situation

This is all about French history in the end - during their revolutions, whoever sat left was branded communist, whoever sat right became a conservative. It has never suited the Greek reality (for example, the communist leader Aleka Papariga enrolled her child at the prestigious, private American College in Athens, Deree). The Greek people want politicians to leave, since all the austerity measures they have taken have failed. They have put the social cohesion of the country in great danger. Cutting pensions, wages, creating an instable fiscal system and executing blindfold economic theories have nothing to do with the reality of the country. They are just an execution from the government of what the international monetary fund (IMF) and European creditors (especially Germany) say with no adaptation to the country’s specificities.

The maid reacted…what are we going to do?’ | T-shirts refer to the sex scandal surrounding the former IMF chief and creditor of Greece, Strauss Kahn

In history, revolutions started because people could not stand any more taxes. My generation’s future is decided by the people and the same political class that created the problems in the first place. The least I can do is to hit the streets. Whoever remains silent, consents (ο σιωπών, συναινεί). Over the last years youngsters have been so appalled that they have turned their backs on everything that had to do with politics. I hope to see new leaders coming from this situation and not from the same political families.

The Greek premier George Papandreou or opposition leader Antonis Samaras have never worked in their lives. How do we expect them to understand where can youngsters find money to pay the taxes? Politicians do not allow innovation or create a positive environment for young entrepreneurship or growth. They push us to leave abroad. A very good friend of mine who works in green energy was told by a representative in Silicon Valley: ‘the problem is not that you are Greek, but that you are a Greek company.’ What else is there to say?

All in all, this is just a description of a symptom of deeper-rooted reasons. We Greeks have never believed in the notion and idea of a central state.

Main image is an ‘Art Bank’ opening in Athens, a performance about the ‘non-value of money’ (cc) SpirosK/ Flickr/ SpirosK official blog

by Constantinos Giannoulis

I haven’t written anything in this blog in several months, but here it is; a thought bugging my head for the past few months.

The topic? Trust!

The scope? The Greek crisis, tragedy, issue or whatever you call it!

People have been talking, writing, blogging, complaining, demonstrating, etc. about it. People have been making money over it, people have been losing their jobs and have been suffering the consequences of it, etc. People have been proposing solutions, everybody has a take on the problem, aseverybody suffers the consequences or will shortly do.

There seems to be a common understanding on the fact that there is a problem in Greece, with particular focus in the economy. Though it’s an ill-defined problem; is it the state? is it societal norms? is it all of the above? is it an organized plan against Greeks? Everybody defines the problem as they understand it. My intention is neither to talk about who caused it and how nor to provide a solution. After all, not being an economist, that would only address my definition of the problem similarly to every other non-expert’s.

Kifissos was one of the three ancient rivers of Athens. Today, the GAIA CENTRE of the Goulandris Museum and MELD, introduce us to a new project about the revival of the river and how the city could benefit from it. A unique workshop for children will take place! Check out more..